“You know what would be handy?” Ronda asked. The man’s eyes darted across her, sizing her up.
“For you to get out my way?” he grunted.
“An animal vac-pack.”
Ronda nodded curtly, then continued on her way. Without looking, she knew the man briefly watched her go, before hurrying to catch up with the rest of his group.
As she walked, Ronda allowed herself a smile. Some things she couldn’t change, but other things, she could.
She found the ship just where she knew it would be. The code that opened the landing ramp was as she had foreseen, the ‘enter’ button precisely as stiff as she’d expected.
The pilot’s expression of surprise was something she’d hadn’t been anticipating. She took a moment to enjoy it, then took a seat in the gunner’s chair behind him. The pilot was a thin, reedy young man with fish-like features and eyelashes that went on for days.
“How did you get in here?” he asked, his voice shaking with the shock. “Did I …? The ramp, I thought I’d …”
“You did, dear, relax. You’re doing fine,” Ronda assured him. “Now, you’re going to take me to Tussk.”
“Uh, no. No, I’m not.”
Ronda sighed and placed her bag on her knees. As she talked, she rummaged inside. “Look, Marl – can I call you Marl? I’m going to call you Marl. Look, Marl, here’s the situation. You worked for Katona. That was a mistake. You’re a good boy, and I know you thought working for Katona would help with your money problems, but deep down, you knew it wasn’t right. Right?”
Marl swiveled his chair around to face the old woman. “What are …? I don’t … Look, who are you, lady? I still work for Katona.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I mean, I do, right?”
“No, dear,” said Ronda. She withdrew a neatly folded handkerchief from her bag and tossed it to Marl. It chinked as it landed in his lap. The young pilot’s eyes widened as he unfolded the material and saw the contents. Gold teeth. Lots of gold teeth. “You work for me now. And we’re going to Tussk.”
Marl stared down at the teeth. There was still blood and chunks of gummy flesh clinging to a few of the larger pieces. He folded the handkerchief again and slipped it into his pocket, then raised his eyes to Ronda.
“And what if I just toss you off my ship and fly on out of here?”
“No, you don’t do that,” she said. “I’m not entirely sure what I threaten you with to convince you to take me, but take me you do.” She smoothed down her slacks and fastened her seatbelt, then shot the pilot something that resembled a smile, but very much wasn’t one. “I suggest, for both our sakes, you take me at my word on that.”
She waited just long enough for the meaning behind her words to sink in, then held out a small paper bag. “Spit Nibble?”
* * *
Tussk grew in the viewscreen like an aggressive cancer, a malignant brown and gray blot rapidly expanding on a landscape of stars. It was a small, ugly moon circling a large, dead planet right at the edge of the Remnants – a once-thriving star system all but destroyed by Zertex in a yet-to-be-rivalled show of military force. Now, the Remnants was a breeding ground for gangsters, warlords, and other unsavory types. Ronda had spent a few years at a convent a little deeper into the system, back before Narp was born. It had been one of her more relaxing appointments.
“They’re going to hail you in a moment and ask for the docking codes,” Ronda said.
Marl tapped his earpiece. “Yeah. Got them now. What’s the code?”
Ronda clasped her hands in her lap. “Unfortunately, I didn’t foresee that part.”
“What?!” Marl spluttered. “So how are we supposed to get permission to land?”
“Well, dear,” said Ronda, flipping open the arm rests of her chair. A series of weapon controls unfolded, slid and locked into place around her. “That really depends on how you define ‘permission’.”
A stream of red warning text flashed across the viewscreen. “Ships! Incoming ships!” Marl yelped. “Four … no, five. We have to get out of here. We can’t fight them! Do you know who this is? Tussk is Xandrie territory. You do not fonk with the Xandrie. You just don’t!”
“Shh, now, don’t go getting your knickers in a twist,” said Ronda. “Just pop flight control over to my station, there’s a dear.”
“What?! Are you nuts?! You can’t pilot and gun at the same time. I mean, how—?”
“Marl. The flight controls. Hurry now.”
Something about the way she said it made Marl do as he was told. Somehow, the idea of disappointing her was more terrifying that the thought of the approaching Xandrie ships. He tapped the necessary controls and his console went dark.
“All yours,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. “Uh, you might want to put on the targeting visor,” he suggested.
Ronda shook her head, just briefly. She hovered her fingers over the controls, slipped her hands into position, then leaned back and closed her eyes.
“What are you doing?” yelped Marl. He glanced at the screen. Five flashing red icons illuminated between them and Tussk, and quickly began spreading into an attack formation. “Open your fonking eyes! You can’t see!”
“Don’t need to see,” said Ronda. “I need to remember.”
“Remember? What the fonk are you talking about?”
Ronda opened one eye and swiveled it until it fixed on the terrified pilot. “Marl. Please.”
She closed her eyes again. She inhaled slowly through her nose.
And then, she remembered.
She remembered the attack vectors of the Xandrie ships. She remembered the routes of their torpedoes, the projections from their plasma-guns.
She remembered the frequencies of their shields, and the corresponding angles at which controlled bursts of cannon-fire could punch right through.
She remembered the screaming, crackling at her over her headset.
When she’d finished remembering, she opened her eyes and found Marl staring at her, his eyes so wide his long lashes went vertical in both directions. Her fingers tapped across a series of keys, and Marl’s controls hummed into life again.
“Take us down, dear,” said Ronda. “Landing bay six is unoccupied.”
Marl swallowed. “Uh, yeah. OK. Sure,” he said, then he slowly swiveled his chair back to the front.
Ronda popped a Spit Nibble in her mouth and chewed on it. They were homemade, of course, and not bad, even if she said so herself. Tussk grew steadily larger, colors swimming across the screen as the ship descended through the atmosphere.
Much of the moon was shrouded in thick gray cloud. To the north, it was dangerously acidic, and anything above the equator was inhabitable only by a handful of species, and none of them anything you’d care to meet. The south was more hospitable, but still not somewhere you’d want to take a vacation. Or briefly visit. Or, if it could possibly be avoided, look at a photograph of.
The ship swept low over a terrain of angry-looking mountains. They stabbed at the sky like ragged sword-blades, as if the world below were fighting back against the clouds above.
Marl’s scanners showed only one settlement for thousands of miles in any direction. It lurked like a spider in a nest of cliffs and ridges, one central hub attached by long corridors to eight landing bays. Marl swiped across a touchscreen and studied the schematics.
“Which one is—?”
“That one,” said Ronda, pointing at one of the bays. The domed roof stood open, revealing an empty pad inside.
“So, what, they just left it open for us? Just like that?” asked Marl.
“Yes,” said Ronda, picking up her bag and setting it on her knees. “Just like that. Now take us down. And keep the engine running.”
* * *
The air smelled stale and second-hand when Ronda made her way down the ramp. She’d been expecting that, of course. Or had she? She couldn’t quite recall.
A man and a woman waited for her, just as she’d known they would. She
smiled at the woman and hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder. “So good of you to come out and meet me…”
Ronda reached for her name, but couldn’t find it. She’d known it earlier, she could have sworn.
“…dear,” she concluded.
The woman – a long-limbed, slender creature with pale yellow skin and a face like a startled giraffe – nodded slowly. “You’ve come for Narp.”
The man beside her, with his low forehead and large tusks, was low-ranking muscle, Ronda knew.
Or thought.
No, knew. Or had known.
Or …
It hit her, then. The realization. The realization that she had no idea what was about to happen next.
And because of that – because she didn’t know – she did know. And her blood ran cold in her veins.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
“Oh,” said the woman, raising a small remote-control device. “Yes.”
Ronda threw herself into a diving roll just as the platform erupted behind her. The heat propelled her across the bay, launching her towards the Xandrie woman and her sidekick.
She didn’t need premonition to know what was happening to the ship, or to the young man aboard who had, as far as she had been aware, had his whole life ahead of him. Metal screamed as the hull of the ship exploded. A forcefield snapped up just inches from Ronda’s back, shielding her and the Xandrie gangsters from the hail of flaming debris.
Premonition or not, she still had her instincts, still had her training. She hit the ground awkwardly, but recovered quickly, rising into an uppercut that slammed into the man’s groin. He grimaced, but only slightly, and Ronda felt a shock of pain explode across her knuckles.
“Armored,” the man said, his voice hissing and slurring between his tusks. “Barely felt a thing.”
He raised a foot to chest height and thrust it forwards. It was a big foot, and it moved quickly. Under normal circumstances, Ronda would have dodged before he’d even decided to kick, but her ability to predict the future was being blocked, and that could only mean …
She twisted sideways, narrowly avoiding the kick. As she turned, she hooked an arm around the man’s calf, and jerked it sharply towards him. His knee discovered an angle it had wisely elected never to investigate before, and the brute dropped in a mess of tears and high-pitched screams.
“You idiot,” the giraffe-faced woman spat. “I told you to stay on script.”
“Is it you?” Ronda asked. She sized the woman up. “No, it’s not you. Where is she? Do you tell me?”
Giraffe-face nodded slowly, then about-turned and walked with a sort of lumbering grace towards the mouth of the corridor. “This way. She’s expecting you.”
“Yes,” said Ronda, straightening her pants suit and tightening her grip on her handbag. “Of course she is.”
3.
She saw Narp first. He sat at a terminal, his hands cuffed to his chair, a headjack locked into the port behind his right ear. Reams of blurry green text streaked across the screen of a battered old monitor positioned in front of him. He wouldn’t be looking at it, Ronda knew. He didn’t need to. She had her talents, and her son had his.
The handcuffs were tight around his wrists, the metal cutting into his flesh. This made her happy. Not because of the injuries – Narp had a tendency to milk such things, and she’d likely never hear the end of it – but because it suggested he was there against his will. She had probably known that already, but as there was now a gaping void in her head where the future had been, she found the sight of the cuffs reassuring, all the same.
Eight Xandrie sat, stood, slouched or loomed around the station’s central hub. They were all from different species, some of which Ronda didn’t recognize. There was a Greyx, all hair and muscle and snapping, wolf-like jaws. Across the scuffed metal table from him sat an orange-hued blob-like figure with a quivering, semi-transparent skin that showed most of his organs. Ronda had never encountered one of … whatever he was before, and would be quietly pleased if she never did again. He grinned gummily at her, showing thousands of pin-like teeth.
Across the room, a partly-mechanized Symmorium leaned against a wall, his black, shark-like eyes staring at Ronda, cold and unblinking.
She skimmed across the others, then turned and settled on the woman lurking in the shadows behind the door Ronda herself and Giraffe-face had entered through. She hadn’t known the woman would be there, but she had suspected. It was, after all, just what she would have done.
At the convent, they called them ‘Imbukas’. They called them worse things, too, but ‘Imbuka’ was the official classification. Out in the world, though, most people thought of them as ‘anti-nuns’. Fallen nuns who had turned away from one of the Five Paths, choosing instead to abuse their gifts for personal gain.
In many ways, Ronda was an Imbuka, too. She had set off along at least four of the Five Paths over the years, and had wandered off every one. There was a difference between ‘wandering off’ and ‘attempting to eradicate from existence’, however, and Ronda still considered herself much more ‘nun’ than ‘anti’.
“Sister,” she said, nodding in greeting.
The shadows fell away as the woman stepped out from behind the door. Her dirty red hair hung over her pale face like old theater drapes. An eye peered through the straggly strands, the pupil a deep, haunting black, the iris matching the red of her hair. Her ruby lips were stretched into a mockery of a grin, and her dark robe swished as she paced in a semi-circle around Ronda.
“Sister,” the woman replied, nodding back.
“Ronda.”
The woman giggled. It was a high-pitched hiss, like steam escaping from somewhere it probably shouldn’t be. “Voss. And yes, I know.”
Voss. Voss. The name was familiar, but Ronda couldn’t place it. That was the problem with not having her premonition. If she had, she could simply have made a mental note to look the name up when she got home, then looked ahead to a point in time shortly afterwards. Now, all she had to go on was her memory, and her time at the convents had been a lifetime ago.
“I’ve come for my son,” said Ronda. She knew Voss didn’t need the visual clue, but she deliberately glanced towards Narp’s motionless back, all the same.
That giggle came again, hssssss-hssssss-hsssss.
“We’re using him,” said the giraffe-faced woman.
“I know,” said Ronda. “You’re using him to decrypt Zertex security protocols so you can steal …” Her eyes darted left and right, searching for the memory. “Something important. A device.”
“A weapon,” Giraffe-features corrected. “Once he’s done, he’s free to go.”
Ronda almost accepted that, but something nagged at her. A memory of a memory that hadn’t yet happened.
“No. They find out it’s him. They take him away. I never see him again.”
“Never gonna see him again anyways,” whispered Voss, then she giggled again when Ronda threw her a dead-eyed look. “Never gonna get out of here alive, nun.”
Ronda calculated the odds, and came to the rather depressing conclusion that the Imbuka was probably correct. She still had one card left to play, but while it might help earn Narp’s freedom, it was unlikely to save her life.
She reached into her handbag. Around the room, five blasters turned in her direction. “It’s not a weapon,” she assured them.
Something green and dome-like rose out of the bag, followed a moment later by a pair of large, round eyes. The eyes could only be described as ‘large’ when compared to the rest of the head, however. They were a fraction of the size of Ronda’s eyes, for example, and yet they seemed to take up eighty-percent of the tiny cherubic face that appeared from within the bag.
“Alright?” said the creature, in a surprisingly gruff voice. He sat, cross-legged, on Ronda’s hand, tapping out a rhythm on his knees.
The Xandrie all stared in silence at the little green man. Voss stared, too. Clearly, she hadn’t been expecting him,
but then that made sense. It would be taking all her concentration to block Ronda’s premonition, meaning that when it came to the future, Voss was equally as blind.
The doll-sized man eyeballed them back, still tapping out his beat. Were they not part of the most feared criminal gang in the sector, the Xandrie would have to admit the guy was pretty fonking adorable. He looked like the cartoon mascot for a ‘Galaxy’s Cutest Baby’ competition, and while at least one of the gang members wanted to eat him alive, most just wanted to take him home and put him on a shelf.
“What the fonk you all staring at, you soppy sacks of shizz?” the little man snarled. “I heard you got a hacking job you need doing.”
“Mr Thundercrotch here is the second best hacker in the system,” said Ronda. “He assures me he’s more than capable of breaking into the systems you require, and – unlike my son – he’s prepared to do so willingly. I hoped you might be prepared to make a straight swap, and let my boy go.”
“Thundercrotch?” snorted the giraffe-faced woman.
The little man shifted his eyes towards her and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “You’d better believe it, sweetheart. Thundercrotch by name …”
He bounded up so he was standing on Ronda’s hand, did a quite aggressive sort of war-dance, then thrust his hips forward. “Thundercrotch by—”
A set of canine jaws snapped down, devouring Thundercrotch whole. Ronda looked up into the dark brown eyes of the wolf-like Greyx. He swallowed with some difficulty, then flicked his long red tongue across his lips.
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist,” he said, flashing a few teeth in Ronda’s direction, before turning and heading back to his seat.
Ronda stared at her palm, which was now empty, aside from a dribble of Greyx drool. She looked over at her son, still jacked in, still oblivious to her presence. She felt a weight in her chest, a sadness radiating outwards like rot spreading through her insides.
Nine Xandrie. One Imbuka. She’d survived worse, although never without her premonition, and never without injury. She’d been younger then, too. Faster. Stronger.
But age brought benefits also. Wisdom. Experience. And, more importantly, a fonking heavy handbag.
Space Team: A Lot of Weird Space Shizz: Collected Short Stories Page 12